The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory has devised a high performance computing data center, popularly known as HPC, which is targeted solely at innovation of technologies concerning efficient renewable energy generation and utilization. The computer giants of the likes of HP and Intel have collaborated with NREL to create a liquid cooling system that has an average power usage effectiveness rating of above 1.06 on an annual basis. HP ProLiant SL230s and SL250s Generation 8 servers and eight-core Intel Xeon E5-2670 processors have been used to power up the whole system. Smith Group JJR and the Integral Group have contributed in installing pumps that are of high efficiency and produce less noise. This allows constant power supply to the cooling system, wherein the whole arrangement consumes only 480 VAC of power.
Now another question was posed in front of the authorities – How the heat, which the system generates through its various operations, could be utilized? Unlike most data centers, who discard this huge energy, the lab’s new Energy Systems Integration Facility decided to tap this energy by reusing it. This breakthrough concept causes minimum expenditure of energy and provides a sustainable solution. As Hammond explains the drawback of traditional data systems in comparison to HPC by a simple analogy, “it’s like putting your beverage on your kitchen table and then going outside to turn up the air conditioner to get your drink cold.” By this technique, as much as eight hundred thousand dollars can be saved on a monthly basis, which further amount to provide savings of $1 million annually.
Next generation machines built to provide high efficiency and performance is sure to be a landmark in the course of technological evolution. According to Earth Techling, the first phase of the work has been completed last year and considerate progress is expected by 2013.
